Figure Drawing for Artists

CHAPTER 5THE LAWS OF LIGHT

I’ve been very clear that I devise self-serving definitions. Obviously, the body doesn’t have tubes hidden inside it nor are there long axis wires flowing through it. We creative types perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to get a handle on this thing called “art.”

But the laws of light are something we can take into the laboratory and prove. It’s science. Nature works by physical laws. People discover them. Soon, we come to depend on them—the scientists and the artists. These laws are so constant they take us into the outer realms of space or inner realms of quantum physics. But, think about this: another word for laws is rules. Another word for rules is formulas.

A Male Nude Seated with His Back Turned, c. sixteenth/seventeenth ...